This just jolted an old high school memory for me. My school threw a party for all of the seniors a few days before we graduated and we all hung out until 6am at place they rented. A similar hypnosis guy came in and that was the same exact approach he had. He asked for volunteers in the audience and I immediately raised my hand cause it seemed like it would be funny. He probably picks people eager to join because they're more likely to be open to suggestions.

So it's like 3am, he had about 10 of us sit in a row of chairs while he had us do some deep breathing and relaxing. He told us to close our eyes after he tapped us on the shoulder. After what felt like a half an hour, he tapped my shoulder again while saying something along the lines of "...he'll stand up and play the air guitar..." More time passes and I'm listening him go on and on making suggestions for everyone else to do stuff. All I can really think about is that I'm supposed to play the air guitar at some point but I have no idea when or how. In the back of my mind I'm playing around with the idea of just pretending to be asleep. But nope, sure enough this guy shakes my shoulder pretty hard which makes me open my eyes, he puts a pink blow-up guitar in my hands and my immediate reaction was to stand up and pretend to play it a little bit in front of my class, then he suggested I sat down and closed my eyes again, which I did.

Now I'm definitely not saying hypnosis is "real." It was a mixture of me wanting to see what would happen, being tired, and him just throwing me into a situation that he suggested and had me thinking about for awhile. On top of that, I had already performed in front of my class a few times and I wasn't worried about embarrassing myself at all. If I really wanted to mess with the guy's show, I'm certain I could have. But in the end it was just a fun and quirky thing. If he had suggested anything weirder that my phone was my shoe or anything that involved me having to really sell it, I wouldn't have done it. Simple air guitar? Sure, whatever.